


we don't bleed when we don't fight

by Kirstein_and_Arlert



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-13 04:30:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1212745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirstein_and_Arlert/pseuds/Kirstein_and_Arlert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the Battle of New York, Clint is recovering from Loki’s influence on him, and is assigned an operation by a dying superior agent: to look for a ghost; an agent who has been missing and presumed dead, but has been sighted.</p><p>Doctor Barbara Morse has been presumed dead for seven years, and now she’s out for revenge on the people to blame — and that list includes more than the people who captured her.</p><p>But soon, Morse won’t be the only ghost, as Clint throws caution to the wind, and plunges himself into an operation that could kill every single person involved – or save even more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The bulk of this fic takes place around about the same time as Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
> 
> Sexual assault is briefly implied in this chapter.
> 
> The rating is T, but that will probably change with future chapters.

_The world was blue and distorted. Clint could hear the whispering in the back of his head, the orders to shoot, kill, shoot, kill, shoot, kill._

I don’t shoot to kill _, Clint thought, but he did it all the same. He watched them fall to the ground, arrows sticking out of their backs or chests and even their heads._ This is wrong _._

_Natasha, Natasha standing in front of him, her eyes wide in surprise._

_“You didn’t kill me before,” she whispered, her hand wrapped around the shaft of the arrow sticking out of her chest._

No, no, please, no. Not Tasha. _He couldn’t move. He could only stand there and watch her bleeding out, her eyes fixed on him._

_“Clint,” she whispered as a banging started to fill the helicarrer, like something was trying to tear it apart. “Clint!”_

 

 

“Clint!”  
  
Clint jerked awake, his legs tangled in the sheets, one hand cramping up from how tightly he’d been clutching the pillow.

“Clint!” Natasha was banging on the door, shouting his name. “You’ve got twenty minutes before I break the door down.”

He dragged his hand across his face. She’d been doing this for months. Coming around in the morning, even when it was just a normal day with no missions, and leaving late at night. It was like she was worried that he’d do something stupid.

Sometimes she even brought along Carter. Like he needed two babysitters. It was bad enough having one. Two if he counted the ‘precautionary measures’ that had been taken when he had eventually got his clearance back and been allowed as far as Medical. A tracker in his arm, like he was a rabid dog they needed to be able to find at all times. Fury had objected, but Clint had said yes, just to stop the suspicious looks.

It hadn’t worked.

“Clint!”

“Okay, I’m coming.” If she kept it up for much longer, she’d wake the damn neighbours, and that was the last thing Clint needed.

Clint dressed quickly and checked the clock – eight thirty; he’d got about three hours sleep – before he opened the door.

Natasha was standing there with her arms folded, dressed in a neat tailored suit. She looked over his shoulder into his apartment, frowning. Clint didn’t think that it looked that bad – he needed to do laundry, and there were a few dirty plates on the coffee table, but he’d cleaned a few weeks ago. Maybe he should have opened the curtains and cleared away the duvet and sheets from the couch.

“How much sleep did you get?” she asked as Clint pulled the nearest coat on – leather, a birthday present from Natasha last year. She’d given it to him so that he’d throw out his old one, complaining that soft leather didn’t mean that it was okay to keep when it was falling apart. He’d only repaired the sleeve twice.

“Three.” He grabbed the toast just as the toasted popped weakly. It had survived the apartment building falling down around it, but it hasn’t worked that well before.

Natasha pursed her lips. “You should see someone about this. It’s not healthy.”

“I don’t need that much sleep. I’m still on light duties, remember?” ‘Light duties’ was a nice way of saying they were so worried that Clint was going to crack, that he hadn’t been sent into the field for months. Clint hated light duties. It was glorified babysitting at best. “I’m fine.”

“You’re having nightmares,” Natasha said as he locked his door and started down the stairs, slipping past her.

“That was one time.” He’d made the mistake of falling asleep when Natasha had still been in his apartment, and she’d woken him up when he’d started talking in his sleep. Clint didn’t see her roll her eyes, but he swore he heard her do it. He wasn’t fooling her at all.

“Yes, and I’ve only ever killed one person.” Natasha was quiet until they finally reached the bottom of the stairs. “Why do you live on the top floor?”

Clint shrugged. “The rent was cheaper.” The truth was, the apartment had been the only one he’d looked at. Clint’s last apartment had been destroyed during the Battle of New York, and he didn’t think that he’d be with SHIELD for much longer. He probably couldn’t pass a psych eval to save his life, let alone his job

Not that he’d tell Natasha that.

 

 

“I’ll call you later,” Natasha said as Clint got out of the car. There were a few SHIELD agents nearby, and they regarded Clint with suspicion. Natasha glared at them. “Do you have something you’d like to say?”

“Leave it, Tasha. It’s fine.” Clint recognised one of the agents; his brother had been one of the people Clint had killed.

Not only did none of the other agents trust him as far as they could throw him, Clint had been given everyone's favourite job: guarding Dominic Fortune.

Clint didn't see why Fortune needed to be guarded. He was hooked up to drips, a heart monitor, a chest drain, and on so many different medications that he had trouble staying conscious, let alone saying anything or going anywhere. If he was having a good day, he managed to play a few basic games, told some good jokes and stories about the old days -- Clint was sure that some of the ones about Coulson and Fury were never supposed to be told.

Most of his days weren't good days. He had hardly been conscious today, and Clint had spent most of it reading or trying not to think about anything other than making sure that no one killed Fortune, got information from him, or whatever the hell Fury was worried someone would do.

"We've got the latest footage from the area," Twitchy said. He was one of SHIELD's many nervous techs. His codename had been randomly assigned but, whatever he'd been like when he had joined SHIELD, he fitted it perfectly. He’d probably grown into it. Clint had never seen him relax. He was always on edge, waiting for something bad to happen. He was a good tech, though, and he was one of the few who didn't try to avoid Clint.

Fortune nodded, focusing on the screen. It was the most alert he'd looked since Clint had arrived. Natasha had called him once about a meeting – something about meeting up with Steve Rogers, and he hadn’t even stirred. Clint had been glad that he was on light duties when he’d heard that; even thinking about the Avengers made him think about Loki.

Clint turned back to the book he'd brought -- a psychological crime fiction thriller, according to Natasha, but he didn't see what was so psychological or thrilling about it so far -- and flipped to the page he'd folded down.

_The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, I thought as I walked down the path._

_I would find this thought funny several days later. The woods were anything but lovely, but they were dark and deep._

 

 

_Bodies all around him. Natasha. Fury. Coulson. Hill. Hand. Blood all over the floor and his hands. He’d run out of arrows and had finished the job with his bare hands. Their blood was still warm, and Chisholm was standing over him._

_“Knew you had it in you, kid,” he said, and slapped Clint’s shoulder with one bloody hand. And he was in the woods again, eighteen years old again, and terrified._

_The woman screamed and Clint nocked the arrow. He drew back the bowstring – deep, even breaths, don’t shake, don’t shake--_

 

 

"I've already went back. This is the best shot I can get of her."

Clint jerked awake. The book was on the floor at his feet, several more corners bent, and Fortune was gesturing wildly at the laptop which showed the footage of the area.

The screen was filled with the image of a woman -- already enhanced judging from the irritation in Twitchy's voice as he told Fortune it wouldn't get any clearer. She was half in shadow and obviously knew where the camera was, at least well enough to try to avoid it. Her long blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail and she was dressed entirely in black.  
She hadn't been on any of the other footage from the area... Clint had seen the footage almost every single week since Loki had attacked.

The same area. Everyone had always assumed that he had wanted the footage because he had lived on that street, but what if he'd been looking for someone? What if he had found them?  
Was that why he always had an agent assigned to guard him while Twitchy ran through the footage?

It made more sense than them wanting to protect a man who had enough trouble staying conscious, let alone telling anyone anything.

Clint scrambled up, reaching for the notebook and a pen that they sometimes used to play noughts and crosses when Fortune was having a good day.

"Who is it?"

Fortune opened his mouth, but started coughing as soon as he tried to speak. Clint caught 'Mor' before the name was lost.

"Morris?" Clint asked, trying to make the name out beneath the wet coughs as Fortune tried to repeat it. Blood speckled Fortune's mask as he began to hack and cough again. He went to step away to call for someone, a doctor, a nurse, anyone, but Fortune grabbed his shirt to stop him.

"Morse," Fortune rasped. "She can save me...Serums...Fix mine...Find Morse."

“I’ll get Fury to assign someone—“

“No!” Fortune’s grip grew tighter, pulling Clint closer until they were face to face. “Don’t… You need to do this. You…” He trailed off as his gasping got louder, his lips beginning to turn blue.

Clint wrenched himself from Fortune’s grip and ran out of the room to look for a doctor, leaving Twitchy standing there helplessly.

“Find Morse. Bring her h—home,” was the last thing he heard Fortune say before the machines began to scream.

 

 

_Find Morse_. Fortune had said it like it was easy. There had been twenty-three different Morses in SHIELD’s database. Eleven were dead, seven were men, three were dead, one was a lab tech in San Francisco, and one was the woman he was looking for.

Doctor Barbara Morse was a ghost. An agent presumed dead, who had been sighed after her ‘death.’ Clint had seen the ones who were brought back before, half-crazy or just half there.

Clint hadn’t even reported this sighting. He almost had – he’d made it to Fury’s office before he’d turned back, overcome by doubt. What if it was a false alarm? What if they assumed he was setting a trap to kill more agents? What if it was a trap?

So now he was trying to track a complete stranger down, with absolutely nothing to go on. She’d been ‘dead’ for seven years.

He wasn’t even sure what he’d find if he managed to track her down. Would she even be able to tell him where she’d been? Would she remember, or would they have wiped it from her mind?

Clint sighed. This was stupid. Trying to find Morse was the dumbest thing he’d done since he joined SHIELD, and that included that dragon mission he and Natasha had volunteered for. The best he’d find would be a traumatised woman who probably wouldn’t want to talk and the worst would be someone who had no idea what had happened, and no memories.

_But she made it back to Fortune’s safe spot. The place they’d agreed to meet. She remembers_. Her face was burned into his mind. The thin file was as well.

Very few people had known Barbara Morse when she had worked for SHIELD. Tony Masters had trained her in hand to hand combat. His codename was Taskmaster, and he was currently missing most of his memories and working as a gun for hire. Not a common outcome, but Clint was half tempted to join him. It would be nice not to remember.

Doctor Wilma Calvin had taught her and worked with her. She was currently unreachable in Florida, working on a new attempt to revive the super soldier serum project. Clint had met Doctor Calvin a few times. She’d been nice, a bit short if she didn’t have anything important to say to you, and definitely one of the scientists who preferred the lab to the field.

Clint had managed to get a few sentences out of Melinda May about Morse, before one of the nerdy scientists had pulled her away.

_“Smart, kind, very capable. She was a good agent. It’s a shame what happened to her.”_

Yes, whatever had happened to her was a shame – and it was a shame that Clint had no idea what _had_ happened to her. He hardly knew anything about her.

Morse’s file held the bare minimum. Her parents were dead and she had no siblings. There was a brief history of her education, but when it came to her career, everything apart from the names of her operations was redacted. The last one was called ‘Operation Reverie’ and the end date was seven years ago.

The estimated date of death was the same as the operation end date.

Clint had found himself standing in front of the Wall of Valour a few hours earlier, wondering what the hell he expected to find. Some secret stash of information hidden in the name carved into the wall?

It had just been a name on the wall. ‘Barbara Susan Morse.’ Was Susan her mother’s name or a grandmother’s name? Or was it a name her parents had picked because they liked it?

“Birdie, you are a ghost,” Clint said, bringing up the file again, like she would hear him and say something to him.

And that was the most painful part. She was the only person who could really tell him anything useful. Morse was a ghost. And not just SHIELD’s definition of a ghost. Her file was almost empty, and it looked like every other file. It looked like Clint’s own. Clint’s middle name was Francis, after his mom’s dad, a man he’d never even met. That wasn’t in his file. Barney wasn’t even mentioned. His mentors were, but only because they were criminals who were wanted by SHIELD.

No one joined SHIELD for glory or to be well known. They joined to help people, and became… nothing in return. They were codenames and numbers with an outline of a life, if they were worth it.

Morse had disappeared off the face of the Earth for seven years, and her presumed death was nothing more than a footnote. How many of those footnotes had Clint caused when he’d been under Loki’s control?

Clint watched the footage, the way that Morse walked along the street until she was right in the middle of the screen, only to stop dead and stare right at the camera. It was a message. She wanted them to see her, she wanted them to see her face and know that she was still alive.

He’d already compared the footage to the photograph in her file. She’d been in her mid-twenties when the photo had been taken, her hair put up in a bun that was beginning to come undone, and she was wearing glasses, but the woman in the footage, ten years on, her long blonde hair hanging past her shoulders, and wearing no glasses, was definitely the same one.

Fortune had grinned and managed to say ‘she was always gutsy’ before they’d sedated him. Clint thought she was bold. She’d wanted to be noticed and had made sure that she would. She’d looked at the camera like she was challenging whoever was behind it, but she hadn’t looked happy. Clint had never seen someone look so sad.

Where had she been for the last seven years, and what had been done to her? And how the hell was Clint going to find her, let alone bring her in?

“What are you trying to tell us, Birdie?”

 

 

The screens blinked into life when Clint walked in. He figured that asking Twitchy wasn’t technically ignoring Fortune’s demands that it had to be him – he couldn’t ignore what was probably Fortune’s last wish – since Twitchy had been there when Morse had been seen on the tape. Clint hadn’t counted on Twitchy calling in two of his friends – Bangs and London – for assistance. Bangs specialised in explosives, while London’s area was every kind of tech that existed. She’d made him some great arrowheads over the years.

“Got anything on Bir—Morse?” Birdie was a better name to use anywhere he could be overheard, since it wouldn’t be easily linked to Morse, but it still made Twitchy give him a weird look.

“She never talked about her work very much,” Twitchy said. “I never really noticed it back then. I always thought she wasn’t the talking sort, but I guess it was a big secret.”

“You knew her?”

Twitchy looked surprised. “Yeah. They were talking about setting up a new team, and Morse was a front-runner for the leader. I was tapped for tech. After she didn’t show, the team was scrapped. It was supposed to be an elite team with a specialist from each section. Morse was there for science and combat. I was tech. London was equipment. Bangs was explosives. I kept in touch with Bangs and London, but we all thought Morse was dead. Everyone thought she was dead.”

“Wait, wait, wait – go back. Didn’t show?”

“We were doing a lot of work on shady scientific organisations,” London said before Twitchy could answer. “One of them was Advanced Idea Mechanics – AIM.”

Clint recognised the name. They were one of the few companies where undercover operations were explicitly forbidden. He and Natasha had suggested an operation to Fury once, and Clint had been worried that Fury was going to punch something. He’d stared at them for several seconds.

‘ _Under no circumstances are you going to approach AIM while undercover. I have overlooked your questionable tactics during several operations, but if you approach AIM, I will not have you reassigned to another base, I will have you stripped of every single piece of identification, and your identities removed from SHIELD’s database. Do you understand me?_

Neither of them had ever seen Fury so angry. Annoyed, sure, but threatening to wipe someone off the map was a whole other level.

“This isn’t a legit investigation, is it?” Twitchy asked.

Bangs rolled her eyes. “What gave you that impression?”

“Oh, I’m going to get in so much trouble when this is found out,” Twitchy muttered, but he was already typing and clicking faster than Clint had ever seen him before. And Twitchy was fast all the time. “This is sealed, right, so you can’t tell anyone. Not even Morse if you find her. Or Fortune. Especially not Fury. I like being a person.”

“I promise.”

“Doctor Barbara Morse was assigned to investigate a think tank that had cropped up on SHIELD’s radar,” Twitchy said as the information began to appear on the screen. “That was AIM. SHIELD erased all records of her death as a civilian and had her join AIM as a scientist who wanted to change the world and didn’t care what she had to do to do it. You know the type. Classic mad scientist profile. Anyway, she spent a year undercover, but SHIELD had to pull her out. She thought that another scientist had recognised her, and that he was going to tell someone that she had died, and that she worked with Wilma Calvin – everybody knows that Calvin works with SHIELD. So SHIELD arranged an extraction for that night. But Morse never showed up at the extraction point.”

“So they just wrote her off as dead and didn’t even try to investigate AIM?”

“Clint, you don’t understand. This happened shortly before you were recruited. We used to do things differently.” London gestured to the screen. “Undercover operations used people who already had the skills, rewrote their backgrounds to make them fit in, no one had even given Morse’s operation a second thought. Things like Morse’s situation just didn’t happen. People who join SHIELD don’t usually have any connections. They don’t have people who will recognise them.”

“Morse’s situation? What are you not telling me?”

Bangs, Twitchy, and London exchanged a look. Twitchy shook his head, but stopped when London glared at him.

“I need to know everything,” Clint said. Twitchy opened his mouth. “Everything.”

“They showed up on the file one at a time. We always kept an eye on it. We were her friends, you know. We were going to work on a team together.” Bangs stepped away from her desk to stare at the screen. “Show him, Twitch. He needs to know.”

“I don’t think—“

“Show me!” Clint snapped.

Twitchy clicked a few times and moves his chair away from the workstation. “Don’t say I didn’t try to stop you.”

It was a video.

_The room was small, dank and poorly lit by the single bare bulb that hung in the middle of the woman. There were two people in the frame – a person in a bright yellow hazmat suit with ‘AIM’ printed on the front, and a woman strapped to a metal table. Her face was half in shadow, but it was Morse. There was a cut and a bruise on the side of her face, but she looked healthy. And furious._

_“Why were you sent here?”_

_Morse glared at him. “Fuck you.”_

_Something sharp flashed in the shadows and Morse began to scream._

Clint closed his eyes and kept them shut until the screaming cut off suddenly.

_Morse was sitting against the wall of a small room that looked like a cell. There was an open wound on her leg that looked infected, but she clutched at the sheet and sobbed, trying to scramble away from something out of sight, her fingers leaving bloody smears across the dirty white cotton._

Clint closed his eyes again. He had seen things like that before, other footage of agents who had been captured. The torture before that part hadn’t been the traditional kind, and Clint had to fight the urge to cover his ears to block out the sound of Morse’s whimpered pleas for someone to _stop sending him, please stop sending him_.

_More torture. More screaming. A glimpse of a poorly shot surgery – something being implanted in Morse’s abdomen. Morse sitting on the floor, her hands covering her ears, screaming as people dressed in identical hazmat suits surrounded her, watching her._

_“As you can see, our work has greatly intensified the subject’s visions. They can now be induced by someone simply being in the same room as her. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that she is able to handle the psychological strain of our work.”_

If Clint ever met him, he was going to put arrows through both of his eyes, and every single piece of skin he could shoot. Morse was a person, not some test subject to be experimented on until she snapped.

_She was bloodied and bruised, her hair was longer and matted past her shoulders, but it was Morse. She was working in a lab now, carefully measuring out volumes with steady hands, injecting different mice with different syringes._

_And then she was back on the table, but there was no sign of the anger or fight that had been there in the first clip._

_“Director Fury, I believe that the woman we have held here for the last five years is one of your agents. She has refused to give up any details, but her name is Doctor Barbara Morse, and she faked her death to join your organisation.”_

_He was still wearing a mask, but he sounded happy when he pressed the needle into Morse’s arm and she didn’t even blink. She just kept staring straight at the camera, her expression blank; her eyes empty._

_“As you can see, Director Fury, your agent has ceased to respond to any external stimuli. We believe that it was caused by either the experiments we carried out or the excessive torture that was required to induce a state that we could control, in order for those experi—what was that?_

_The camera shook, the footage flickering, before it went black._

No, she hadn’t. The man was wrong. He’d said that she didn’t respond, he’d thought that there was nothing left of the person Morse had been when she’d been captured.

“When was the last clip filmed?”

London rubbed her eyes. “Two years ago. Why?”

“Because I need to know the last sighting of her before today. Because I’m going to find her.”

“What?” Bangs was standing up now, suddenly looking concerned. “Barton, she would have come right to SHIELD if she wanted to be found, not to Fortune.”

“I have to do this.”

“Why?” Twitchy, looking pale and ill. They had known her, Clint registered. They had watched their friend being tortured. They had thought that she was dead. And now the wound was being ripped open.

Clint didn’t know how to reply. Because it was the only thing he could think of doing to make up for killing so many agents. Because she’d survived seven years, and she deserved to have someone try to find her.

Because just before the footage had cut out, Clint had seen Morse’s face clearly, had got a good look at her eyes. It had just been a split-second, but there had been a flash of something there. Anger. Fear. Humiliation. Pain.

Reactions.

Two years ago, there had been something left of Morse when AIM had thought they had beaten her down. Two years was a long time. Long enough to rebuild yourself or reinvent yourself. Something in Clint’s head was screaming that Morse was still herself, that she could be found and brought back, that she might even want to come back.

“I’m going to find her,” Clint said, only half believing his own words. He ignored Twitchy’s terrified expression, and the twin doubtful looks he got from Bangs and London. “I’m going to find Morse, and I’m going to bring her home.”

 

 

The man on the bed was one of many.

He had worked for Advanced Idea Mechanics. He still had the shirt -- or at least he had, before Bobbi had stuffed it in the bottom of her bag. He had been one of the ones who had tortured her. Bobbi hadn't tortured him, although she had been tempted to. He had been the one who had asked her to scream; she had leaned close to him once, just as the drugs began to take effect, and had whispered, scream, in his ear. There had been a split-second before he had realised who she was and terror had swamped his expression.

No, please, no, don't, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh God, oh God, oh...

He had died soon after. There had been no satisfaction in his death, but Bobbi had stopped looking for anything but the silence that followed, the way it went quiet in her head when they died, the way the world faded away until she couldn't see or hear anything.

Bobbi sprayed some liquid from a perfume bottle. It wasn't perfume. The spray would destroy the amino acids, and anyone who noticed anything suspicious about the death would find nothing but synthetic hairs, and a suspicious lack of DNA. The fibres in the coat and wig meant that she wouldn’t show up on the hotel footage as anything more than a bright white blur, and any eyewitnesses would remember a woman with brown hair and brown eyes checking in.

Rocking back on her heels, Bobbi checked her watch. Ten to seven. She'd give it a little longer. She closed her eyes.

_A man down the street crashes his car and goes through the windshield. A woman walks across the road and avoids the cars, but trips over a loose paving stone and fractures her skull. An elderly man stops breathing two blocks away. A teenager walks down a dark alley, there's the glint of a knife –_

_"Please make it stop." So many people. So many lives and deaths. When they got too close, she could hear their thoughts as well. She just wanted it to be quiet. She just wanted them out of her head. “Please. Send him again. Just make the visions stop.”_

Bobbi opened her eyes. Two minutes to seven. She gathered her bag, checking that everything was still there, that she had picked up everything that she needed to take.

Fortune would have seen her on the footage by now. It had been their emergency check-in spot all those years ago. Their last resort. She knew him well enough to know that he never would have stopped looking for her. He’d done the same for another agent, one who had defected to AIM. Fortune had kept looking until he’d seen him on the footage, and then he’d sent SHIELD agents to apprehend him.

If Fortune had seen her, SHIELD would come for her sooner or later.

Bobbi smiled as she shrugged on her coat, adjusted the blonde wig in the bag -- she looked nothing like the woman who had entered the hotel the night before.

Let them come. Let them see what it was like to be live bait, and left behind.

Bobbi wondered if they would be as surprised as she had been.


	2. Part 2

“That’s weird.”

Clint rubbed his eyes, pushing the papers that Morse had published away from him. He understood about half of them with the help of textbooks London had given him and good old Google. Morse’s speciality was creating serums that did everything from strengthen a body to destroy it from the inside out. She’d created several serums for SHIELD, mainly the ones that healed people, but at least two that killed. “More mad science? Or have you finally got into her entrance file?”

“No, they’re still locked up tight. The only person who can access them is Fury, and I’m not hacking those ones. Do you have any idea how many alerts will be on them? Morse owned an apartment in Brooklyn – and someone with SHIELD still owns it.” Twitchy had finally stopped fretting about what Fury would do when he found out that he was hacking files, and had been tearing through anything that could be linked to Morse for the last day and a half. Clint had spent most of the time in his office with everything he’d been able to get as hard copies.

“What?” Even with the videos, there was no reason for SHIELD to have kept her apartment for seven years. Apartments belonging to missing or dead agents were usually sold or given to other agents after two years. Clint sat up straighter and read the screen. The one bedroom apartment, belongings included, was definitely owned by a SHIELD agent – the code was a SHIELD code. And the access code that identified who had accessed the file most recently… “Fury.”

 _Like every other file related to Morse_.

“Deeds go back to Neil Farroway. What’s the bet that it’s one of Fury’s civilian identities?”

Clint wasn’t stupid enough to take that bet. Everything was leading back to Fury. That kind of thing had happened other times, but not with a Ghost. Why the hell did Fury own Morse’s apartment? And why had he locked down all the files relating to her?

 

 

“There’s nothing here,” Clint muttered, shutting the closet door on the neat row of clothes. Dress shirts, dress pants, jeans, casual shirts, coats and jackets. Sneakers, boots, and shoes lined up in a row along the bottom. A pile of hangers beside the sneakers. The bed was neatly made as if Morse had made it that morning.

It didn’t look like anything had been touched since the day that Morse had disappeared.

Clint didn’t know what he had expected. The whole place to have been gutted like it should have been? No, he hadn’t expected that for a second.

It all felt so wrong. AIM letting Morse live for so long. Fury renting the apartment for five years, buying it, and then locking down the files. Morse hadn’t been a high ranking agent, she wasn’t involved in anything too big, she wasn’t anyone important. The thing that had made SHIELD notice her had been her work on serums and her mentor – it wasn’t like she was a genetically engineered genius who was a cyborg or something.

Or maybe she was. Twitchy still hadn’t managed to access her entrance interview or any of the examinations from her transfer from SHIELD Academy to SHIELD itself. Clint really hoped that she wasn’t a cyborg. He’d had enough weirdness lately to last him the rest of his life. He _really_ hoped that she wasn’t a ‘something.’ A ‘something’ could be an alien and he never wanted to see any aliens again unless they were called Thor. He’d had enough of most aliens for twelve lifetimes.

“Find anything?” he asked as he went into the open plan living room and kitchen.

Bangs was sitting on the kitchen counter, swinging her legs back and forth. It looked too clean now that she had wiped away the thick layer of dust that still covered everything else in the apartment. The kitchen hadn’t been touched.

“Apart from enough dust to make Twitch choke? Nothing. No secret stash of weapons, no hidden laptops or USBs, absolutely nothing.”

There were rows of photographs on the walls. Morse with her friends and family, Clint assumed. A photo of her with a man who looked like he was her dad. She was holding a baseball bat up and grinning at the camera. Graduation photographs of her with a woman who looked so much like Morse that she had to be her mother. A brother with the same blonde hair and green eyes. In one she and Doctor Wilma Calvin were holding glasses of champagne.

“Something’s wrong,” he said. “Can’t you feel it?”

“Oh, yeah, I can feel it all right. You think we should ask Fury for some more people?” Bangs was flicking through an address book now.

Clint though about Fortune in the hospital and the way he’d asked him to find Morse. “No. There’s something wrong here. I’m level seven, I shouldn’t be shut out of those files. No one who’s level seven or above should be. Fury’s the only one who has access to them.”

“What do you think this is? The X-Files? We can’t just go it alone and hope for the best.” She jumped off of the counter. “It doesn’t work like that Clint. ‘Trust no one’ doesn’t work in the real world. We need to trust—”

“Trust what? The system? Fury? Hill? Hand? If we start asking questions, all those files will disappear just like the ones about every other Ghost.” Ghosts were risky, Ghosts were dead men walking. He thought of Morse’s face on the video, the determined expression on her face on the CCTV footage. If she’d survived for seven years, the last thing he wanted was to be the reason she died.

Bangs opened her mouth to say something –

“Twitch found a pattern,” London said and Clint winced. He hated having to keep comms on all the time. Bangs shut her mouth, still glaring at him. “Over the last two years, more than two dozen people connected to AIM have been found dead. Twenty-nine, to be exact.”

“She’s taking revenge on AIM.”

“Not just AIM. All the people who were killed spent some part of the five years after Morse first disappeared off the grid.”

Five years. AIM had had her for five years. Morse was going after the people who had been involved in her capture and torture. Targeted revenge killings. Clint thought of the recording, the anger and humiliation he’d seen.

“What about the last two years?”

“That’s when it gets really interesting,” Twitchy cut in. “All of these people were back on the grid within a month of the date that the final video was sent to Fury. We’ve got no confirmed sightings of Bobbi at any of the places where the bodies were found – hotels, motels, usually public places, only a few houses – but at almost every single one, a witness remembers someone arriving but never seeing them leave. And the security footage doesn’t pick up their image because they’re wearing equipment that interferes with it.”

“Let me guess – Morse liked that equipment?”

“Interference tech was her second favourite. Camotech was her best friend.” London answered that one. Clint loved the arrows she made, but some of her inventions were… slightly more unsettling.

“Please tell me that camotech doesn’t do what it sounds like it does.”

“Sorry. As long as you can get a scan of someone, you can make yourself appear to be them. It can even disguise voices.”

 _Yeah, sure. Because looking for a Ghost isn’t hard enough. I have to be looking for a Ghost who can change her face, voice, and can’t be seen on security footage if she doesn’t want to. Awesome. At least she definitely wanted Fortune to see her_.

Twitchy was still talking about the camotech. Clint tuned him out as he looked around the apartment again, lingering on the graduation photographs.

And then he knew what was wrong with the apartment. The kitchen was covered in dust, but the bedroom wasn’t. The closet was too empty. The living room was dusty, but the photographs had been cleaned recently. There were obvious finger marks on the frames and glass.

There was no sign of any equipment or disturbance that pointed to a stash because Morse had already been back for it a long time ago. And she’d kept coming back.

“She’s been here. Recently,” he added when Bangs looked surprised. “She came back after she got away from AIM, cleared out her equipment and tech, anything that someone wouldn’t immediately notice and took care of the things they would. And she’s kept coming back to take care of the place. There isn’t enough dust on the photos. Twitch, can you get me lists of any conferences for scientists that are happening soon?”

“Wait, why are we looking at them?”

“Birdie’s finding these people somewhere. Evil scientists aren’t going to trust a complete stranger, so she could be tracking them down at conferences.”

“That’s… a really great idea. I can’t believe I never thought of that. I’ll check and get back to you.”

Bangs made her way towards the door, but stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “Clint, don’t take this personally, but I’m out for tonight.”

“Can’t break the rules?”

“I can deal with going rogue.” It had never been said, but everyone had accepted the implication. If they didn’t call in Fury or any other agents, they were working outside of SHIELD. If they were working outside of SHIELD, they were going rogue. “I just don’t want to stay in her apartment tonight, and I can tell that you’re going to. I don’t want to sleep in my previously-believed-to-be-dead friend’s apartment.”

Clint nodded and waited until the door closed before he let out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding.

“Just you and me now, Birdie,” he said, hoping that she’d bugged the apartment and that he wasn’t talking to himself. He opened the file on the first known death; he’d read it later, when his mind stopped racing.

Morse could come back. She probably wouldn’t, but she could, and that was what mattered.

 

 

“Just you and me now, Birdie.”

 _I knew it was a good idea to bug the apartment_.

The effort had almost killed her, but she’d managed to spend two days bugging the apartment. She’d been annoyed that it had taken her so long. Looking back, Bobbi was surprised it hadn’t taken her longer. She’d hardly been able to stand up at that point, her body still shaking off years of being stuck in a tiny room and recovering from her last month there.

Bobbi watched the man cross her living room and examine her photographs again. SHIELD’s database pegged him as Clinton Francis Barton, a circus performer turned agent – it made her top ten of weirdest agent origins – who was one of SHIELD’s best agents.

He also wasn’t assigned to look for her, but he _had_ been assigned to guard Dominic Fortune. So Dom had definitely seen the footage, just like as she’d been expected. But he hadn’t come himself, so was he onto her? Did he even know what was going on?

Or had he given up on her? Had Fury told him everything? Dom hated AIM almost as much as Bobbi did. If he knew…

No. He couldn’t. Fury had promised.

Bangs had been there. Did that mean that Twitchy and London were involved as well? It had been so long since she’d seen them – almost eight years. Was Twitchy still with Roland? Had London ever managed to convince her sister to move closer to her? Was Barton their friend or were they just helping out for her? Had the World Counterterrorism Unit ever been set up?

She wanted to go up to Barton and ask. The look on his face when he saw her would be worth it.

Bobbi sat back against the wall as Barton turned sat down on the couch and looked out the window. He wouldn’t see her, not with her sitting in the dark and wearing night vision glasses, but the urge to hide from someone’s gaze was still strong.

 _If they can’t see you, they can’t hurt you_ , was bullshit, but _if they can’t find you or catch you, they can’t hurt you_ worked perfectly.

Settling her laptop on her knees, Bobbi closed her eyes. The hotel room was nice, convenient, and allowed her a view into her apartment, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t home. None of the places she’d stayed in for the last two years were. It wasn’t like she could really go home. No matter what _he_ had said.

_”I want to go home,” her voice was so quiet that she wasn’t sure that the guards would hear her. “Please. I’m of no use to you. I’m not a high-ranking agent. I—I make serums for Medical. You can’t trade me for the people SHIELD already had. I’m not worth that much.”_

_There was only silence in return. Bobbi dropped her head to her knees. They’d kill her soon enough, and it would all be over. SHIELD had sent her in to get information, and she’d already given them it. They didn’t need her, they definitely wouldn’t trade for her. She was already dead._.

“Come on, Birdie, give me a clue,” Barton said, picking up a pillow and picking at the tassels on the corners. It had been a gift from Wilma when she’d moved in. She’d almost taken it, but the bright blue made it too noticeable to remove. Bobbi opened her mouth, her finger pressing on the button to open the second channel that allowed him to hear her. She stayed like that for a moment, the words stuck in her throat.

Barton had stopped fidgeting with the tassels on the pillow and was listening for something.

She let her finger slip off the button.

“I’m sorry,” Bobbi said, and she really was.

_”What do you think?”_

_”I don’t think anything. I_ know _that you’re cruel, and that you enjoy seeing her suffer. I know that I’m sorry that I ever believed in you or your cause.”_

She wasn’t the same person she’d been before. That Bobbi Morse didn’t exist anymore, never really had.

_”Oh, no, I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about those delusions you’ve created. You think that if you get out of here, they’ll welcome you back with open arms? Even if they haven’t worked out the truth by now, they’re going to work it out if you’re brought in from the cold. You can’t go home again, Bobbi.” His hand wiping the blood from her chin as if she was a child._

_Tears welled up in her eyes. He was right. She could feel_ her _pushing at the back of her mind. Fighting back._

_“Well, there’s only one thing to do,” he said, and she heard the word before he even said it._

 

 

“You were right,” was the first thing that Twitchy said when Clint walked in. Clint rubbed his eyes, trying to remember what he’d said or done that was right lately. “Bobbi’s picking up the AIM agents at invitation-only scientific conferences. I found at least three happening in the area soon, so I cross-referenced conferences with the deaths we know about, and every single one lines up with a conference.”

“Do you think she’s punishing them?” London asked.

Clint sat down at one of the empty workstations and tried not to close his eyes. He’d spent way too long talking to Morse. If Fury had bugged the apartment, then he probably thought that he’d snapped – like everyone else did. But he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he was being watched, that Morse was listening to him. It was stupid at best, desperate and pathetic at worst. Why would she be watching him? She was probably out looking for her next target.

“No. I read the reports on half of the deaths last night. They die quickly. If she was punishing them, she’d have tortured them the way that she was tortured.” _The way I’d torture Loki_. “She sets it up too neatly. What was she like? Did she have an easy time killing?”

“She didn’t find it difficult, but she didn’t enjoy it,” London said. “She once told me that sometimes killing people is necessary, and she didn’t feel happy or sad when it was done.”

“So maybe she started setting everything up to torture them? The earlier killings showed signs of restraints and there was a scalpel found under the bed at the second crime scene. She set it all up, but when it came to the torture, she couldn’t do it.” Morse was angry, probably traumatised, but AIM hadn’t made her sadistic. She didn’t enjoy the killings and, whatever she was looking for when she killed them, Clint got the feeling that she wasn’t finding it.

That was an in.

“I need to speak to Fury,” Clint said, heading towards the door. He owned Morse’s apartment, and if she’d had access to it, Fury would know.

“It’s a bit too late for that,” Bangs gestured to a screen above her workstation. Fury’s photo was on the news? Oh, that was just great. “He went off the grid yesterday. Something about an assassin. I didn’t catch it all before Twitchy stopped listening in.”

Twitchy held his hands up – they were shaking. He’d been working for a while. “Sorry, I just don’t like listening to the director’s private channels. Especially when we were told to clear out four hours ago.”

“And I told you that we’d do the briefing first, then I’d handle Fortune, while you and London set up somewhere else,” Bangs snapped.

“I got something a lot more interesting from my own research.” London pulled up an image of a motel. “I found the first place Bobbi stayed at after she got away from AIM. In eleven days, it will be exactly two years since she rented that motel room. And in two weeks it will be two years since someone we know showed up at the same motel and used the name Neil Farroway to rent a room for the night. He was gone the next morning, and Bobbi left two days later. The owner remembered them both very well. It’s just off the road closest to a shore you can use to get to AIM Island.”

“What do you want to do?” Bangs asked.

“About what?”

“Well, Fury knew that Bobbi was alive. That means that she isn’t really a Ghost. Maybe she didn’t want to come back and Fury didn’t update the file because nobody’s supposed to know that she’s alive. After what we saw on those videos, I wouldn’t blame her if she never wants to be on the grid again.”

Clint closed his eyes. Okay, Fury was involved. That wasn’t surprising. But if Fury had known that Morse wasn’t with AIM, then why hadn’t he brought her in? Or at least changed her status on the files? And why had she deliberately tried to catch Fortune’s attention? Had Fury given her access to her old apartment and let her clear out the equipment? Had he sanctioned her revenge missions?”

There were too many questions, no answers, and the only two people who knew the answers weren’t around to give them.

“No. We ignore everything involving Fury. Morse wanted Fortune to see her. She wanted our attention, and now she’s got it. Whatever Fury was doing with her, Morse is the only one who’s involved right now, and the sooner I find her, the sooner I find out what the hell’s going on. You said you were told to clear out?”

Twitchy nodded, then immediately looked like he regretted it.

“If you want to help, make sure anyone you care about is safe. We can use the safe house I set up with Nat; nobody ever goes there. We’re going rogue.”

 

 

Bobbi wasn’t sure when she had fallen asleep, but it had been before Barton had left her apartment. She’d watched him walk around, sit on the couch, look through the cupboards and closets, and finally fall asleep slumped in the corner of the couch. He hadn’t slept for long – he’d had a nightmare or something, saying something about someone called Loki – that was the alien who had tried to take over the world, wasn’t? – and had woken up looking terrified. He hadn’t gone back to sleep while she’d been watching.

She’d woken up with a sore neck and the beginning of a headache. Barton was gone, and Bobbi had been surprised to find that she was disappointed. She was still disappointed. He’d kept talking to her whenever he’d been awake, little questions or mentions, as if he knew that she was watching.

Not replying had been the most difficult thing she’d done recently.

 _You don’t even know him. Keep your head in the game. He’s nothing. They’re nothing. Last night was a slip. You’re not their friend, and they wouldn’t be yours if they knew, so stop thinking of them,_ she thought as she dug around in the empty bottle for the last two Psy-Block pills. She swallowed them dry and tossed the bottle into the trash.

It wasn’t that easy to keep her mind on her target. Every single time Bobbi glanced out the window, she pictured Barton and Bangs standing there, she wanted to accept the offer and just go home. Eventually, she closed the curtains and switched on the light.

Mad scientists. If there was one thing that you could always count on, it was that they’d flock to the nearest mad scientist conference to share their latest plans for the destruction of the human race. Or the world. Whatever they were destroying this week. Bobbi recovered her laptop from the floor and scrolled through the list of guests that she’d downloaded, highlighting the names she recognised.

 _Doctor Andrew Forson_.

Bobbi smiled. He wouldn’t have too many guards in such a public place. He’d be an easy target. Barton, the poor sucker sent by SHIELD, would make good bait to distract any members of AIM who got in her way.

She tried to ignore the twinge of guilt that followed that thought.

 

 

“Hey,” Twitchy caught up with Clint halfway down the stairs. Clint nodded, keeping an eye on the agent who was following a few feet behind them. Everyone was acting weird today. No one had been whispering about him, but there had been more than a few suspicious comments about Fury, Steve, and Natasha. Clint had a bad feeling that didn’t have anything to do with spending the night on Morse’s couch. “Roland took the dogs and left town. He’s… not really in a good mood right now, so thank you for that. There’s a conference in the area that begins this evening. The opening lecture is ‘Recent Advances in the Biological Manipulation of Precognitive Abilities’, by a Doctor Andrew Forson.”

“That’s a mouthful.” Precognitive abilities were visions, right? It had been mentioned in one of Morse’s papers. Clint had remembered it because, unlike everything else, it hadn’t come up in any of her later work. There had been one paper – one of the first, if he remembered it right.

“The keynote speech doesn’t matter. The speaker, however, is closely connected to AIM. In fact, he was the person Bobbi was investigating. SHIELD suspected that he was attempting to create the perfect mole.”

“How?”

“No idea. But what’s the bet that Bobbi’s going after the big fish this time?”

Two years. That was a lot of time to spend putting yourself back together while killing the people who had tortured you. And even more time to spend waiting until you could take a shot at the big fish.

Clint stepped around Rumlow, returned the glare he got, and said, “Then we start tonight,” to Twitchy.

They split off at the next corridor. Clint caught the eye of one of the young scientists that he’d seen trailing after hand recently, and smiled. She grinned back before she followed her friend.

 

 

It had been painfully easy to fake the invitation to this conference, although Bobbi hoped that Doctor Sanderson didn’t mind her borrowing her identity for a few days. They’d never been particularly close, but Sanderson had always said that a friend of Wilma Calvin’s was a friend of hers. She dropped her bag beside the bed and lay down, stretching her arms and legs. There was a fresh bottle of Psy-Block in the bag, but Bobbi didn’t plan to use it. There was no use compromising her abilities when they would make it easier to anticipate events and find Forson.

She closed her eyes, reaching out for the people around her.

 _Stress, irritation, more stress, anger at a spouse who complained about their hours, regret for not visiting dying family members_.

There was nothing unique about any of the minds Bobbi could feel, nothing that her own latched on to, nothing that would cause visions. That was what Bobbi liked about hunting down agents at conferences; they were all thinking about things that her brain could handle. Their minds were all so painfully normal.

Then she felt it.

_Trauma. Detachment. Someone digging into their mind, twisting it, breaking it. Pain. Blood. Fear, so much fear._

A mind that didn’t belong. Her hands twitched as she struggled not to clamp her hands over her ears. Shit, maybe not taking the Psy-Block was a bad idea.

But then she wouldn’t be able to find Forson’s mind in the crowd. She knew it like she had known Slade’s before she had killed her.

 _Sitting in the corner, her hands over her ears, screaming to try and block out the way she could feel emotions and experiences seeping into her mind_.

Bobbi glanced out the window. The cars down the block were all perfectly normal everyday cars and there was nothing that looked like it could belong to SHIELD. The mind belonged to someone who worked for SHIELD. Some of that trauma was spy specific, the exact kind that came from an enemy getting hold of you. The rest, she couldn’t place. Childhood trauma, perhaps?

“No sign of SHIELD,” she murmured, tapping her fingers against the sill before digging through the bag until she found the small comms unit that she’d stolen from AIM the day she had escaped. It was old, but it worked.

 _Better not to take any chances_ , Bobbi thought as she checked the SHIELD frequencises. Silence, silence, silence.

“There’s no sign of her,” a man said. Barton. Bobbi’s head throbbed, some part of her brain connecting the voice to the mind she’d tapped into. Fuck. They were sending someone that broken after her? He probably didn’t even know that he was cannon fodder. She’d known that Fury could be a cold bastard at times, but this… This was like Bobbi herself all over again. She almost felt sorry for him. “You got anything?”

“None of her known aliases have checked in at any of the hotels, and no one matching her appearance has been seen on security footage.” Good old Twitchy and his tech. Bobbi smiled, despite knowing that he was looking for her. It was nice to hear his voice, almost like being back working for SHIELD, listening to him passing her information as she worked.

“I’ll check in later.”

“Keep your comm on, Barton.”

Bobbi picked up the bottle of Psy-Blocks from the bed. She’d thrown it there when she’d been looking for the comms unit, and it looked very tempting. After a moment, she dropped it back into the bag.

Better to keep her wits about her.

 

 

Bobbi smiled politely at one of the security guards as she walked into the conference room. It was in the top floor of the building and, sadly, the shoes weren’t included as part of the camotech. She’d never been as glad to find an elevator in her life. And her feet still hurt.

Then again, her feet weren’t the only things that hurt; Barton’s mind was already giving her a headache, which meant that he was close enough to feel without reaching out to find him. SHIELD had sent him in to find her. That was brave, even for Fury.

 _Okay, so all I have to do is find him, talk to him, and desensitize myself to his mind before I have a brain haemorrhage or whatever happens when I spend too long around a mind that’s that messed up. Easy. Let’s just hope that London didn’t give him camotechl_.

She doubled back towards the balcony. Barton wouldn’t feel comfortable around a lot of people, not with that much damage to his mind. He’d want to find somewhere as close to private as possible, but still close enough that he could watch the room when he had to…

Bingo. He was standing with his back to the room, leaning on the rail. Bobbi grabbed a glass of wine from a passing waiter. _Show time_.

“Hi,” she said, waiting for him to turn before she smiled at him. God, he made her head hurt like hell. She could _feel_ the way his mind had been ripped apart and reformed. The damage didn’t show on the rest of him, though – he had his suit jacket off and slung across one arm, and she could see well-muscled arms and strong shoulders under that shirt. She wondered if Fury had purposefully sent someone who was her type, or if it was a coincidence. “Not a fan of conferences?”

His eyes travelled down her body, spending a few more seconds on her breasts than was absolutely necessary, before he looked at her face again. Bobbi knew that the dress had been a great choice. “Not a fan of crowds.”

“Oh, I know the feeling.” She joined him in leaning on the rail, facing towards the room and pushing her hair back behind her shoulders. It was colder than she’d expected out here. The dress was produced by the camotech and most of her body was covered by her real clothes, but her arms were still cold. “Let me guess – you’re more of a lab person than a people person.”

Barton smiled. “You could say that.”

That was a nice smile. “Well, you could try playing a game to make it more interesting.”

“A game?”

It was so easy to slip back into the person she had been before. She’d played this game dozens of times with Doctor Calvin, making up new squares every year. Wilma had always won during the first couple of years, but Bobbi had got better the longer she had played the game. The last time they had played, she had won.

“Conference Bingo. The middle square’s free, but the others are all assigned. I mean, look at the people we have right now. We have the elderly scientist who hasn’t made any contributions to any fields for over ten years, but who is always invited because he’s well known.” Doctor Timothy Haven, whose work in manipulating the human mind was the stuff of legends. “We have at least _three_ people in suits so far out of date that they might actually be vampires. We have five groupies trying to find the most successful people in the room and talk to them.”

Barton laughed at the last one. His mind warmed, some of the sharpness and pain fading from her head. “How can you tell?”

“Are you kidding me?” Bobbi moved closer to him, pointing to a man and a woman who were flitting around a group, desperately searching for someone who was willing to talk to them. “They’re dressed like they’re going to prom and they have no idea how to approach anyone here. They’re not professionals, and everyone here knows it.”

“So you just watch everyone and make fun of them in your head.”

Bobbi smiled at him. God, it was starting to get cold. How long was she going to have to spend out here? “It’s one of the only things that makes these things bearable. That and the open bar. If they took that away, they’d never get me out of the lab.”

_The room was freezing, had been for hours, and she could feel the push at the back of her mind, even though she’d lost the feeling in her fingertips hour ago._

_“It won’t work,” she whispered, her breath fogging in front of her. “I’m real. I’m real.” A murmur in the back of her head, a reply, a lie. “I’m real…?”_

She blinked. Barton was gesturing towards a man in the room, trying to hide his smile.

“So, is he trying to pick up the hottest women in the room, but never going to manage it, because they’re all way out of his league?”

He was middle-aged, balding, sweaty, and was wearing a wedding ring. He was also currently hitting on someone who looked like she was barely out of grad school.

“Congratulations, you just got a line.”

“And what’s my prize?”

_”If I say yes, what do I get? Do I get to go home?” The blood had dried in the ends of her hair, forming little tangles that were quickly becoming clumps. She picked at one of them, watching the blood flake away from the strands. “Or do you destroy me and replace me with…. Her?”_

Bobbi shrugged, steadying herself against the rail. “I let you hide out here and don’t talk to anyone I know, unless they can get us some of those free drinks.”

“Sounds like a good trade.” Barton took his jacket from his arm and moved towards her, chuckling. “You’re shivering.”

“What? Oh.” She was. “I’m sensitive to the cold,” Bobbi muttered. It wasn’t really a lie. It was the thought of spending a long time somewhere cold that she was sensitive to. Her arms were cold, but she was fine otherwise. It didn’t stop her from shivering, even as Barton draped his jacket around her shoulders. He stayed close to her, one hand lingering on her shoulder. “Looking forward to a boring weekend full of stuffy scientists trying to avoid admitting that their results are meaningless?”

“You make it a lot more interesting,” he admitted. He was still so close. Bobbi fought the urge to lean back against him. It would be so easy…

_His lips pressed against her neck as she wrapped her legs around his waist. She could see the lights of the city through the window, her own reflection looking back – but it wasn’t her. Bobbi closed her eyes, digging her nails into Barton’s back. If she couldn’t see the lie, it wasn’t really there. She could be this woman. She could be normal and happy, spending the evening in a hotel room with Barton and, in the morning, she could get up in the morning and order breakfast from room service._

_“Hey.” Barton brushed his fingers across her cheek. They came away wet. Dammit, she was crying. “Are you okay?”_

Reality hit her as quickly as it had in the vision. _Dammit_. She had things to do. As appealing as Barton was, as nice as it would be to take him back to her hotel room and fuck him until the conference was over, she couldn’t.

She wasn’t even herself right now. Her hair was the wrong colour, her eyes were too dark, the bare skin that she was showing free of freckles and the weird birthmark low on her back. She was wearing someone else’s skin, for God’s sake.

“Sorry,” Bobbi said, pulling away abruptly. Barton looked confused, but didn’t follow her as she started to back away. “I promised that I’d meet one of my colleagues before Doctor Forson arrives. He wants to pitch a project to him, and he won’t do it alone.”

“I’ll see you later?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” _I’m sorry_.

 

 

Clint watched the woman walk away, his eyes lingering on the curve of her ass, before he turned his attention back to the room, trying not to tug at the collar of his shirt. He hated these kinds of ops. Dressing up and working the room wasn’t his style. That was Natasha’s part of the job, but the closest they had was Bangs, who was too fond of taking out members of AIM to do this. Clint didn’t want to tell Fury that he’d not only gone after a Ghost whose files were locked down, but they’d have to scrape their biggest lead off the walls because Bangs had blown him up.

It was very tempting to follow the mystery women and ask her to dinner. She was odd, but she had a sense of humour and Clint needed someone like that right now. He needed someone who played bingo with at stupid conferences.

“Have you finished flirting, or should I give you a minute to calm down?” Bangs asked.

“Have you been listening the whole time?”

“Most of it,” she admitted.

“Only to the flirty bits,” Twitchy added.

“Those are the bits I don’t want you listening to,” Clint hissed, glancing back towards the room. The woman had disappeared into the crowd by now. Damn. He’d wanted to at least get her number. “Tell me you’ve at least got something useful and you’ve been listening in for a reason.”

“Listen to me, I found out something really bad a few minutes ago.” London’s voice was almost drowned out by her typing. Clint wished that she’d stop putting her units on her laptop. “I checked around the hotels, and there’s one hotel where a woman checked in but wasn’t picked up on the surveillance. And it’s currently catering exclusively to this conference. I would’ve told you sooner, but you were a bit distracted.”

Yeah, yeah, message received loud and clear. Keep his mind in the game and off attractive scientists.

Speaking of attractive scientists… That meant that Morse was here.

 _Shit_. Okay, Morse was a great undercover agent – she’d been given the codename Mockingbird because she could pretend to be anyone, anywhere. So it was just a case of working out who she was. Clint looked around the room, taking in every single person. Wait staff? Too simple, too stereotypical, and she wouldn’t get close enough to the important people for long enough. Security guard? Too isolated, and they would be stationed around the doors when the conference started. So that left…

“The scientists,” Clint mumbled. “See if any of them shouldn’t be here or if any of them have gone missing recently.”

“That won’t work. Camotech was Mock’s favourite piece of equipment. If she’s there, she’s going to look, and act, exactly like the person she’s pretending to be.” Bangs. She’d come back.

“Then how the hell am I supposed to find her?”

“Wait for her to kill someone or drive her out.”

“Great. So the things that I really don’t want to have to do.” If he waited for her to kill someone, he’d be letting her kill someone, but if he tried to drive her out, she’d probably come after him and anyone else. Or start taking out everyone around her. Clint wanted to find out what she could do, but not that way.

Clint pulled the fire alarm without thinking, flinching as the siren cut through the voices. _I really hope this works_.

Chaos erupted around him as people started for the exit. Clint pushed past them, searching for anyone who wasn’t running or acting normally. He was halfway across the room when a crack rang through the air and someone screamed. The people still there split into smaller groups, a small group running towards the shot and the others running to the different exits, Clint joined the group running towards the shot. He caught sight of a smear of blood across the floor. There was a lump that could have been part of a brain a few feet away.

A woman stood over the dead man, a gun held in one hand. It was the woman from the balcony, Clint realised with a jolt. The one who’d approached him, who’d flirted with him. Had she been planning to kill him? Had she been going to put that bullet in his head before something had spooked her? She didn’t look anything like the woman he was searching for, but…

 _Camotech was her favourite piece of equipment_.

“Morse,” he said, wondering if the disappointment showed in his voice..

She stared at him, apparently unconcerned by the half a dozen men with guns who were frozen nearby. One of them had stepped back at the mention of her name. There was no sign of Morse backing down – she raised the gun higher to get a better angle on the guy who was backing away.

Well, at least she couldn’t fight in a dress. Clint had that advantage at least.

“Look, I really don’t want to hurt you. Believe me. But I will if I have to.”

She didn’t smile when she said, “You can try.”

The air around Morse shimmered and the dress faded away, revealing different clothing beneath it. She was wearing a skin-tight black suit that looked almost like a diving suit, and had battle staves strapped to her thighs. There was an empty thigh holster on one leg.

 _Oh, shit_.

That… was not part of the plan.

As soon as the closest man raised his gun she shouted, “He’s with SHIELD!”

It was like she’d flicked a switch. Half of the attention switched from her to him in an instant.

For a split second, everyone who was still in the room was frozen in place.

And then she attacked.

 _The way she moves is all wrong_.

That was the first thing Clint noticed when she attacked, the poles extending to about half a metre long. She was fast, but there was something unnatural about it, something artificially enhanced or inhuman. She was fast enough to bring one of those pole things up to block as quickly as Clint could try and hit her, but it still felt natural, all her. Clint tried not to think about how much training had gone into that, what else had gone into that while AIM had had her, not when he wanted to get out without her killing him – or the AIM members killing them both.

Her movements were quick and carefully controlled, so fast and fluid that Clint could feel himself backing away whenever she moved towards him. Every blow she struck was exact and painful, but they didn’t expose her to any of his attacks. The weapons were kept too close to her body to give Clint a decent entrance for an attack, not without exposing himself to worse injuries. It was all he could do to try and keep out of her reach.

She was brutal and efficient; he would have admired it any other time, but right now it just _hurt_. Knee, abdomen, and finally his ribs, just as he thought he was getting an edge. Clint stumbled back a few steps. That was enough of an edge for her to crack him across the chest again and send him to the ground.

As he scrambled away from the nearest gun that someone swung at him, Clint caught sight of Morse fighting three men several feet away, beating them easily and moving on to the next ones. Clint dodged out of the way of one of the scientists – what kind of scientist carried a gun anyway? – and searched for an exit.

He saw it at the same time that Morse did, and just made it through before she wedged the door shut with one of the battle staves. She swung the other one at his face and he had to duck to avoid it.

“I’m not here to kill you,” he yelled after her as she took off and he steadied himself before following her. God, she was fast.

“Fury sent you to die here,” she shouted over her shoulder, not even slowing down. She turned back to the corridor that Clint hoped didn’t go on forever, because this was going to kill him. How big was this building? It went a long way along the river, that much he definitely remembered. “He knew that I would kill you before you even had a chance to kill me. It wasn’t a job, it was a suicide mission. You were cannon fodder. That’s all you _ever_ were.”

Pissed as well as fast. And what was her beef with Fury, anyway?

“Fury never sent me!” Clint yelled, trying to catch up with her. She was too fast, it wasn’t normal. “The only people who work for SHIELD that know I’m here are the ones you used to work with. Twitchy, Bangs, London. Fortune would know, but he’s in a coma right now so it’s kind of hard to tell him!”

Morse stopped, turning around just enough that Clint could see the confusion that crossed her face.

 

 

Fury hadn’t sent him. That didn’t make sense. Fury was the one who had sent the last agent after her. There was no reason for Barton to be after her if he hadn’t sent her.

Barton cried out as blood sprayed across the wall. He fell to the ground, clutching his arm, blood seeping through his fingers. Some of AIM’s scientists were advancing down the hall, weapons drawn. With one last look at Barton, Bobbi ducked into the stairwell and started down the stairs. They’d be distracted by him for the time being, she’d have more than enough time to—

_Her own reflection looked pale and ill, blood smeared across one of her arms in the shape of a handprint. One of her hands was caked with blood, but the other was clean from wiping the blood from her nose._

_Barton was sitting on the bed just beside her, leaning into her side, his eyes half closed. She let her hand drop until it was resting on his shoulder. He murmured something that she didn’t catch, but she saw him smile–_

Bobbi stumbled to a halt halfway down the stairs, her remaining battle stave rattling against the railings. Fuck. She knew she should have taken the Psy-Block.

 _I should leave him. He isn’t my responsibility. But I’m the reason he’s here, even if Fury didn’t send him here to die_. Bobbi ran back up the stairs, kicking open the door.

A crowd had gathered around Barton, some of them were beating him while others were just enjoying the show. Vultures. They always had liked to watch without getting their hands dirty – it was what made them bad scientists as well as mad scientists.

 _This better be worth it_ , she thought as a few people noticed her and started towards her.

The first man went down with a crack, his skull crunching as she battle staves hit it. The second was caught in the throat with the second battle stave; Bobbi didn’t hear a crunch but he didn’t move to get back up. A punch to the third’s nose made him back away. The fourth’s jaw broke with a single punch and he let out a strangled scream that got the attention of the few people who hadn’t noticed her.

They were beginning to pull their weapons, or at least the ones who had recognised her were, abandoning Barton to get closer to her. Forson was nowhere to be seen, but Bobbi wasn’t surprised. He was a coward who hated getting his hands dirty.

For a moment, no one moved. They just stared at her.

Their minds were nothing special, a bit of bloodlust mixed in with the usual curiosity and sadism, but there was nothing that wasn’t supposed to be there. There was fear, though. Fear of what she had done to other members of AIM, what she would do to them if she had the chance.

Bobbi wanted to hurt them. God, she wanted to hurt them, but Barton had been in her vision, and she had to get him out in one piece. And they were far enough away from him now…

 _Give me a reason_.

One of them lunged; Bobbi caught him around the throat with her battle staves and twisted. He fell to the ground; he was dead before he hit it.

“Big mistake,” she said, and threw a handful of microexplosives to the ground in front of them, jumping back as she did so.

The smoke blinded her, but she heard part of the floor buckle and collapse, the screams and the way that some of them quickly faded, felt the heat of the fire against her skin. The smoke caught in her throat and she gagged, forcing herself to breathe through it. Her body would compensate – it always did.

It took a few minutes for the smoke to fade, absorbed by the

_Well, would you look at that? Dom would be so proud._

The few people who were still standing ran right past her as Bobbi made her way towards Barton, stepping over a few bodies and edging around the hole in the floor.

Barton had been out of the range of the explosives, thankfully. He was barely conscious, blood on his face and hands as well as all over his left sleeve, but he was breathing normally and none of his injuries looked like they’d be fatal. The worst was probably a cracked rib.

“What are you doing?” he mumbled as she pulled him to his feet. He was little more than a dead weight, but he was easy enough to move.

“Saving your ass. Hold on to my shoulders.” He’d leave bloody all over her, but his grip was tight. Bobbi ran her hands across his ribs, easing up when he flinched and tried to move away. “Okay, they definitely cracked a rib. Can you walk?”

The survivors would come back with back-up soon, so they didn’t have long.

“Think so.” Barton smiled weakly. “You came back.”

“Yeah, well don’t thank me yet.”

“I—I have a message.” The man whose nose she’d broken was crawling towards her. He’d been trampled by some of his colleagues and a cut on his forehead was bleeding heavily. “From Andrew Forson.”

Bobbi pressed the ends of her battle stave to his throat. “Well, then, you should really pass it along.”

“He says that it’s time to come home, Barbara,” he rasped, blood running down his face and dripping onto the floor. Bobbi squeezed the battle stave, wondering if it would be a good idea to extend it and put the sharp end right through his throat.

She settled for slamming in against his face hard enough to hear something crack. He screamed.

That son of a bitch. After everything he’d had done to her, he didn’t even have the guts to face her.

“Tell Forson to ask Lincoln Slade if I’ll be coming back.” Bobbi threw the last of the microexplosives against the window and held her hands up against the shower of tiny pieces of glass. She grabbed Barton around the waist and pulled him towards the window. He hadn’t said anything when she’d hit the AIM scientist, but she’d felt the way he’d weakly tensed. She said, “Take a deep breath. The deeper the better,” and jumped.

It was a long drop, and Bobbi had never been as glad for the experimentation as she was when they hit the water. Even with the suit, it hurt when she took most of the impact. The wind was knocked out of her lungs and her head spun as they started to sink into the cold, dark water.

 _Holding her head under until she took a breath, choking, drowning, leaving it until the last possible second until they grabbed her hair and pulled her up._.

 _No_ , Bobbi though, kicking as hard as she could, even as the cold seeped through the suit and right down to her bones. _No, I won’t die here_.

Barton was a dead weight, even in the water, and her lungs strained for oxygen as she struggled towards the surface.

_She was going to die. They weren’t going to pull her up this time. They were going to hold her under until she drowned, or until they broke her, whatever happened first._

The sting of the cold air on her face had never felt as amazing as it did when Bobbi broke the surface with Barton. She shoved him up onto dry land before she dragged herself up and collapsed beside him, gasping for breath. Barton, barely conscious, coughed up some water and made a weak gesture towards the building, the broken window far above the river.

“Long way down,” he coughed, wincing and clutching at his injured arm.

He was breathing, he was talking, he was alive. Injured but alive. That was good, wasn’t it?

Bobbi hadn’t taken the bait. She must have exceeded all of their expectations, letting him live, saving him when she could have left him to die.

She’d saved him. She’d saved them both.  



End file.
